My Mother-in-Law Said 'At Least It Was Early' After My Miscarriage

You're not overreacting, and eight weeks doesn't put a ceiling on how much this is allowed to hurt. Grief here tracks the future you'd already started imagining, not the number on a calendar. That's true whether a loss happens at six weeks or six months.

On your husband: it's very common for partners to grieve on a different timeline, and it doesn't reliably mean he's less affected. He didn't carry the pregnancy, so the loss can feel less physically present to him even when it's just as real emotionally. Some people process by going quiet or throwing themselves back into routine rather than talking. Worth naming plainly rather than guessing: "I'm not trying to catch you out, I just need to know you're grieving this too, even if it looks different to how I am" tends to open the door better than watching and drawing conclusions from a distance. A session or two with a GP-referred counsellor, together, can also help if talking about it directly feels hard to start.

On your mother-in-law: "at least it was early" is one of the most common things people say precisely because they don't know what else to say, not because they've decided your loss doesn't count. That doesn't make it land any less badly, but it's worth separating the awkwardness from actual malice before deciding how much energy to spend on it. If it's still sitting with you, a short, calm correction later, something like "it still hurt a lot, even though it was early," tends to do more than confronting her over the comment itself.

This piece on coping with grief after a miscarriage or pregnancy loss goes through both of these (differing partner grief and other people's dismissive comments) in more detail, plus Pink Elephants and SANDS, who specialise in exactly this kind of loss if you'd rather talk to someone who isn't family.